“Can you stand?” the dark one asks with concern. Then he wobbles and topples over, making the blond one roll his eyes and go to his aid. The dark one is drunk. They probably both are.

“I’m fine,” I say shortly, biting down at the stinging in my side.

“You seem to have fallen into extremely bad company,” the dark one says from the ground, where he sits batting away the blond one’s attempts to bring him to his feet. “If you want to paw at me, St. Juste, you’ll have to ask for my hand first.”

“No one will ever want to paw you until you are less of a drunk, Grantaire.”

“You are to blame for the depth of my drunkenness, St. Juste. Your meetings positively bore me to tears and drive me to the bottle.”

The blond one gives up and turns to look at me, and it is not a look that I will ever forget. He seems to see right through me, scanning me swiftly and taking in the lines of my clothing, the blood on my cheek, on my hands and my feet.

“We should introduce ourselves to our new friend,” the dark one says. “I do believe this urchin owes us his life.”

I wince at that. The idea of a child of Miracle Court owing a debt to one of Those Who Walk by Day is unthinkable.

“I am in your debt, sirs,” I say, the admission sticking in my throat.

“What is your name, little boy?” the dark one asks.

The blond one’s eyes narrow. “Girl,” he says.

I try not to let my surprise show. Almost nobody can tell I’m a girl.

“Girl? Where?” Grantaire looks around comically, and seeing no one else, he blinks at me and points unnecessarily at my face. “That is a girl?”

I raise my chin defiantly. “They call me the Black Cat,” I offer in response.

“Oh, that is good,” says the dark one. “I want an animal name—can I have an animal name too? What about the Drunken Ferret? And you, St. Juste. You can be … the Oppressive Eagle of Judgment.”

“You can call me Nina,” I say, trying to suppress a smile.

“Well, m’lady Nina, I am Grantaire,” the drunkard continues with a swift return of grace and manners. “And this pinnacle of humanity is Enjolras St. Juste.”

Now it’s my turn to stare. St. Juste, the beautiful. St. Juste, the Angel of Death, whose head is one of the six impaled atop the gates of the Tuileries. One of the six little mice—revolutionaries who set the city aflame and nearly toppled the king and queen only a generation ago. And for their pains the nobility fed them to the guillotine and hunted down all of their known relations, hanging them from the gibbet of Montfaucon.

“You call yourself by that name openly?” I ask.

“Oh, here we go. Don’t get him started about his ancestry,” Grantaire says, and takes a swig from a flask that has appeared in his hand.